Surro Files - We're Accepted, We're Matched... Wow, That Was Fast!

Ok, it's been another SUPER busy week around here in the surrogacy world.  I'd have to say this has been the craziest, busiest, most exciting week yet!  When I last left you I had just done my social worker screening call that past Friday and Brian was scheduled to have his call later that Monday afternoon.  If all went well we were going to be accepted with the agency.  Well, you guessed it... Brian's call went great and we were accepted!!!!  I was soooooooo excited!  After a month of filling out applications, getting medical files together, and lots of waiting, we were finally moving on!  Well, that was on Monday.

On Tuesday I received my commitment letter from Circle.  It basically just reminded me what I was committing myself to by becoming a surrogate.  I'm committing my time, my families time, committing to keeping the parents up to date on their child,  committing to travel, committing to the compensation, and many other things.  There's a lot that goes into being a surrogate and they want to make sure I've really thought about this.  I have and we signed and e-mailed our commitment letter back to Circle that day.  In addition to the commitment letter, I also was contacted by their psychologist to schedule a time to take the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory).  It's basically a 338 question true/false test that determines your personality structure and psychopathology.  A lot of government agencies use it in their hiring process.  I scheduled to take the test on Thursday.

On Wednesday morning I received my prospective IP's (Intended Parents) profile.  It was my friend Belle and her husband Adam's profile!  So exciting!!!  Ok, I act like I was so surprised, even though I did request to be matched with Belle and Adam, but hey, you never know what might happen. I was worried that Circle might find some reason we couldn't be matched together, so till we were matched I tried not to get my hopes up.  Although Belle and I have known each other and been in contact on and off for the past two and a half years, it was so fun to read through their profile to get a closer look into their lives, what brought them to the decision of surrogacy, and what they expected out of the journey.  I also got to see a few pictures of them which was fun since I hadn't seen any pictures in awhile.  Of course I let Circle know we were totally interested in proceeding and the next step was to set up a Skype call to talk even more in depth about each other and decide if we wanted to be officially "Matched".

On Thursday I had my MMPI psych evaluation.  Ok, normally I like to pride myself in being prepared and ready to go, but I was anything but prepared when my meeting time came up for the test.  I should have reviewed the instructions ahead of time on how to log in and complete this test.  It's a video conference call completed online.  The psychologist watches you and answers questions via web camera while you answer 338 true or false questions.  Luckily I looked somewhat put together by the time we started, but I did have to run to get my ID and shut down a whole bunch of programs that were making my computer run slow.  Ugh!  Anyways, I was sooooo thankful that she blacked out the webcam so I didn't have to watch her while she watched me take the test.  I was nervous as it was.  The questions were slightly strange.  Anything from "Do you hear voices?", to "Do you want to be a florist."  When I was finally done she said that it looked like everything was ok, but they would contact me if anything looked out of sorts.  Phew!  Glad to have that over.

Thursday part two... Originally I was going to schedule the Skype call to talk with Belle and Adam for Friday morning.  I did not realize how hard it would be to schedule talking time when one of us lives in California and the other lives in England.  There's an 8 hour difference between us two!  We finally settled on calling at 9pm our time and 5am their time.  Not an ideal time, but I think the excitement helped to keep us all awake.  You probably don't know, but I have a terrible fear of Skype.  Ok, not so much a fear, but it's really awkward.  I hate that little picture that shows me talking.  Who wants to look at them self talk?  Maybe if I play around with it I can figure out how to turn that little picture off.  Anyways, Belle knew this and understood (since her husband has a similar dislike of Skype), so when we got our call that night she decided to make it a voice only call.  I'm sure I could have gotten through a regular video call and after a minute would have been fine, but it was definitely a sweet gesture.  Better yet, our call went great!  It didn't feel awkward at all and Belle and Adam were so easy to talk with.  It was like we were old friends getting re-acquainted (I guess we are in a sense).  For those that might not remember from past posts, Belle and I were in the same small chat group while I was trying to conceive Linc (my youngest), so we have already been through so much together.  The call did give us time to talk about a few questions we had regarding family, the surrogacy process, and life in general.  It was really nice.  That is until my little guy decided to wake up in the middle of the call wondering why we weren't in bed too.  Oh, well.  I guess we've got lots of time to talk from here on out so next time I'll just time it better without a cranky little man.  We said our goodbyes and off to bed we went.

Friday morning (for me that's 5am since Linc wakes so early) I sent off my e-mail to Circle stating that our call with Belle and Adam went great and we would love to be officially matched.  Belle and Adam had done the same.  Sooooooo... WE'RE MATCHED!!!  It's so exciting moving forward and knowing that I will get to share this special time with such an awesome couple that I feel I know so much about already is awesome.  Each day from here on out is so exciting knowing that we're getting that much closer to bringing Belle and Adam's little miracle into the world.  Now it's onto contracts.  Bla!  It'll probably take a month to get those.  Till then we'll just sit and wait and talk about the awesome future to come.  Next week I think I'll introduce you to the happy parents to be.  I was going to do it this week, but I've talked too much already.  I just know you're going to love them as much as I do!

*Don't forget to check out my "Surrogacy" tab at the top of this page to catch up on any posts you might have missed*

*Some of the names in this post have been changed to protect the identities of those involved in this journey*